Yo Ho D'oh
Rogue Galaxy offers inter-planetary swashbuckling as only Level-5 can do it -- for better or worse.
Published: February 21, 2007
A couple years back, Disney decided to update the apparently not-so-timeless tale of Treasure Island with Treasure Planet, the same basic story of a lad befriending a pirate and then finding out his true intent, but throwing a ton of sci-fi elements in to spice things up. I have to admit, the whole idea of 16th Century-lookin' ships putting around outer space is beyond cool, but I didn't expect to see something that quite captured that same sense of classic cool so quickly. Rogue Galaxy does it one better, letting you explore a universe rich with different planets, quirky (if fairly cookie cutter) characters and two of Japanese developer Level-5's biggest fortes: cel-shaded graphics and a seemingly endless amount of item creation.
In many ways, RG is being hailed as the PS2's last big JRPG (though most forget there are more niche -- and some would say promising -- games like Persona 3 and Odin Sphere still due out), a send-off for a system that had arguably the best RPG lineup of any console in history. It's certainly the last mega-hyped JRPG now that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have moved onto other platforms, but Rogue isn't quite the swan song that most were probably hoping. Is it good? Oh heyall yes it's good, but it's far from perfect.
Level-5 is one of those developers that know what they do well and stick with it. Even when they were saddled with the unenviable task of reviving the stagnating Dragon Quest franchise, they didn't really stray too far from their roots; it was cel-shaded, it had some item crafting, and actually harkened back to the old DQ games more than it did push the series forward. Still, it was an unequivocal success, and fresh off the high from all the praise they got for helping to jump-start someone else's series, they delved whole hog into creating a new one of their own.
At no point does Rogue Galaxy feel like anything but a Level-5 game. The storyline, which I'll only introduce as orphan-kid-saves-the-galaxy, is so painfully trite that I'm amazed I continued to expect that it would suddenly get better, right up to the end. The characters are lifted part and parcel from any number of JRPGs and aren't even dusted off in some cases to make them seem like anything but cookie cutter caricatures of themselves. The dungeons can range from inviting, lush affairs to painful, seemingly never-ending trudges from save point to save point.
None of these things should be terribly surprising to a fan of the developer -- especially the latter; both Dark Cloud games dragged on a while, and anyone who actually beat DQVIII knows what a lengthy game that is. The thing of it is, Level-5 seems to have a magic pixie dust on their games that keeps you playing through all the snore-inducing parts. Maybe it's the production values, maybe it's the localization (of which Sony should be commended for seriously busting their asses on), maybe it's the sheer amount of side stuff to poke around with. Whatever intangible "it" factor the game has, it manages to quell the creeping sense of tedium that normally permeates these kinds of games for me -- at least for the most part.
Let's start with the inevitable crafting bits. Split this time into two different yet equally entertaining diversions, the Fusion and Factory Systems are at once familiar and different enough that they still feel fresh, despite being old hat for the developers (Fusion is little more than a slightly upgraded version of the Alchemy Pot from DQVIII and Factory feels like an offshoot of the world-building bits of the two Dark Cloud games).
The former, by way of an item noshing frog named (wait for it) Toady, allows you to fight with certain weapons to max out their experience and then combine them with other maxed-out weapons to make something new. You can't mix and match items from other characters, but you do have plenty of freedom to pair up things for one character. It sounds simple, and it is, but then that's why it works, and you can craft some killer items.
In many ways, RG is being hailed as the PS2's last big JRPG (though most forget there are more niche -- and some would say promising -- games like Persona 3 and Odin Sphere still due out), a send-off for a system that had arguably the best RPG lineup of any console in history. It's certainly the last mega-hyped JRPG now that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have moved onto other platforms, but Rogue isn't quite the swan song that most were probably hoping. Is it good? Oh heyall yes it's good, but it's far from perfect.
Level-5 is one of those developers that know what they do well and stick with it. Even when they were saddled with the unenviable task of reviving the stagnating Dragon Quest franchise, they didn't really stray too far from their roots; it was cel-shaded, it had some item crafting, and actually harkened back to the old DQ games more than it did push the series forward. Still, it was an unequivocal success, and fresh off the high from all the praise they got for helping to jump-start someone else's series, they delved whole hog into creating a new one of their own.
At no point does Rogue Galaxy feel like anything but a Level-5 game. The storyline, which I'll only introduce as orphan-kid-saves-the-galaxy, is so painfully trite that I'm amazed I continued to expect that it would suddenly get better, right up to the end. The characters are lifted part and parcel from any number of JRPGs and aren't even dusted off in some cases to make them seem like anything but cookie cutter caricatures of themselves. The dungeons can range from inviting, lush affairs to painful, seemingly never-ending trudges from save point to save point.
None of these things should be terribly surprising to a fan of the developer -- especially the latter; both Dark Cloud games dragged on a while, and anyone who actually beat DQVIII knows what a lengthy game that is. The thing of it is, Level-5 seems to have a magic pixie dust on their games that keeps you playing through all the snore-inducing parts. Maybe it's the production values, maybe it's the localization (of which Sony should be commended for seriously busting their asses on), maybe it's the sheer amount of side stuff to poke around with. Whatever intangible "it" factor the game has, it manages to quell the creeping sense of tedium that normally permeates these kinds of games for me -- at least for the most part.
Let's start with the inevitable crafting bits. Split this time into two different yet equally entertaining diversions, the Fusion and Factory Systems are at once familiar and different enough that they still feel fresh, despite being old hat for the developers (Fusion is little more than a slightly upgraded version of the Alchemy Pot from DQVIII and Factory feels like an offshoot of the world-building bits of the two Dark Cloud games).
The former, by way of an item noshing frog named (wait for it) Toady, allows you to fight with certain weapons to max out their experience and then combine them with other maxed-out weapons to make something new. You can't mix and match items from other characters, but you do have plenty of freedom to pair up things for one character. It sounds simple, and it is, but then that's why it works, and you can craft some killer items.